09/05/2016 – 5 Key Contextualisation posts

1. Photographs from Breckon
https://fingalgreenfineart.wordpress.com/2015/11/22/221115-waterfall-country/
These photographs formed the basis for compositional drawings that I used when painting my large canvas for the ‘Exposure’ exhibition. This painting was where I recognised the importance of the void spaces in my work which encouraged me to pursue it further.

2. Andy Goldsworthy – Oculus
https://fingalgreenfineart.wordpress.com/2016/03/05/05032016-andy-goldsworthy/
His material use and the ephemeral and fragile aspects of his work strongly influenced me, particularly with the sculptures I didn’t end up making.
also see this post.

3. Anish Kapoor – Voids
https://fingalgreenfineart.wordpress.com/2016/03/12/12032016-anish-kapoor/
Kapoor’s pigment and reflective ‘voids’ and notions of the sublime tied in with this. Also the aspect of ‘anima’ and the inside spaces evoking the ‘mother womb’.

4. Portals

20/04/2016 – Landscape symposium

My ideas and final pieces being informed by the portal-like nature of the internet.

5. Hilma af Klint – Colour

22/04/2016 – Hilma af Klint

Klint inspired the colour choices for my final pieces – the separation and then combination of the colours tying in with dual printing processes.

22/04/2016 – Hilma af Klint

In my tutorial yesterday I was recommended to look at Hilma af Klint’s work. Her paintings were recently in an exhibition at the Serpentine gallery called ‘Painting the Unseen’  and one of the tutors lent me the catalogue. Because af Klint’s paintings weren’t seen during her lifetime her influence has been somewhat delayed and her paintings were only showed for the first time in 1986.

The fact that she was reportedly contacted by a spiritual being and commissioned to paint her monumental series ‘Paintings for the Temple’ makes it a very interesting body of work and I am particularly interested in her colour use and the circular and spiral forms. In these paintings she used yellow to represent masculinity and blue to represent femininity. The unity between both she represented with green. This idea of green representing wholeness and unity appeal to me because this separation and then recombination (yellow and blue to green) ties in with the separate parts of my prints then coming together to form a whole. A sort of progression towards unity.

20/04/2016 – Landscape symposium

During the landscape symposium today I realised that my ideas are heavily influenced by the fact that a good portion of our social interactions and learning takes place in a virtual environment.

What interests me about this is the internet is essentially a portal to people and information (to other spaces) which is where it ties into my work. We therefore use portals practically every day and a lot of time is spent exploring virtual environment rather than physical ones. This interestingly links back to my ideas about how we interact with nature and my idea for an augmented reality forests exhibition space I had at the start of the year.

Print (particularly etching)is a way for me to engage with the physical tactile world for hours at a time and to offer other people a more tactile environment to consider and take time over. I was also originally hoping that the central openings would encourage people in some small way to use their imagination to construct spaces.

Screens – a form of teleportation – you can’t be in more than one place at once but but you can see more than one place – this brings into question another whether you can you say you’ve seen something if you haven’t actually been there. This may come down to whether you consider ‘seeing’ as a purely visual experience though.

After Andre’s presentation when he was taking questions we got round to talking about the purpose of art – The understanding that I have arrived at is that creating art is a means of understanding and filtering the internal and external world. I discussed this with Andre and he pointed out that although this may be true everyone’s filters are different and based on their individual experiences. So if you showed two different people the same image they would most likely produce different responses. This I agree with and it reminds me of mathematical chaos theory which are dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions.
Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future. – Edward Lorenz

12/03/2016 – Anish Kapoor

Jill Medvedow in the foreword to the catalogue for Anish Kapoor’s show at the ICA (Boston) ‘Past, Present, Future’ talks about the world metaphorically ‘growing smaller and flatter’ (advent of technology etc) and situates Kapoor’s artwork in contrast to this. I think this is why his artwork appeals to me, it represents an alternative to contemporary art that embodies notions of the sublime and timelessness. In my opinion, except for the different materials and forms, his artwork from 20 or 30 years ago looks no less ‘contemporary’ than sculptures and installations he has made recently. Kapoor’s more recent interest in pigment and polished mirror void spaces is what draws me to his work though. He talks about the sublime existing in the space created by these voids.

Carl Jung’s concept of ‘anima’ – the presence of female characteristics in the male subconscious mind, strongly influenced Kapoor, and these ideas found their way into his art, both through his sculpture and his installations. Some of the forms in the sculpture therefore find their origins in the female body and it has been suggested that these inside spaces evoke the ‘mother womb’.

I do not aspire to mimic this aspect of sublimity in my own work, I think that would be hubristic, but this is an aspect that I’m interested in – the potential of a void or hole to represent something beyond the sum of its parts.

11/03/2016 – Updated Artist Statement

“Art is the expression of pleasure in nature” John Ruskin

The incredible beauty I find in the details of our natural environment is the primary motivation for this body of work. This is my starting point, and however tenuous this is expressed in my work, it is an attempt to produce artworks that provoke a sense of presence that is both ambiguous and uncertain.

I explore the idea of a transient state and a fragile structure, that I find in my surrounding environment. These fragile motifs and compositions are realised through print and sculpture. The prints utilise what I call adaptive doodling – where each new collection of marks adapts to its environment. The sculptural work is a three-dimensional representation of my prints. Both utilise central openings or holes to draw in the viewer’s eye. Outside and inside – the search for unity and balance. This gravitational centre creates new spaces to look into, or through. To look through, gives you access to another space or dimension – the difference between ‘here’ and ‘there’, creates a tension, or expectation. Looking into these forms suggests contained spaces like nests or dwellings – an environment that nurtures growth. These ‘portals’ are transformative and ask us to question our position both physically and psychologically.

“Looking into a deep hole unnerves me. My concept of stability is questioned and I am made aware of the potent energies with the earth. The black is the energy made visible.” Andy Goldworthy

05/03/2016 – Andy Goldsworthy

I was searching through Andy Goldsworthy’s work trying to find out anything I could about his use of circles and voids and I came across Roof, a permanent site-specific installation at the National Gallery in Washington. Goldsworthy describes how he uses circular openings called oculus (eye in Latin) at the apex of each dome. Because of the northern orientation of this site the sculptures don’t get much light, which allows for a ‘velvety black hole that no light can penetrate’. This stems from his desire to give depth to the hole, or void, a device that often crops up in his work.

The installations themselves inhabit the space very interestingly, because of the material he’s used they look grounded, like they’re fused to the earth – despite being sat on concrete. Because the surfaces are broken up and flow outwards from a central point, for me they also denote ripples in a lake or raindrops in a puddle.

Having a specific word for these openings/holes has really helped me articulate my ideas. Oculus meaning eye also has interesting connotations with my work and I have considered exploring this aspect with my etchings.

I also draw parallels between the focus with which he describes working on sculptures and William Morris’s ideas about work pleasure. It is obvious from reading Goldsworthy describe the way he makes sculptures that he revels in the intimacy and closeness to nature that he achieves when working with the natural world and the elements rather than against them. By bringing nothing into a space and taking nothing with him he maintains the equilibrium of his environment.

Because of the similar composition and the ephemeral and fragile aspects of his work I also see similarities between these and my biro drawing on fabric.

20/02/2016 – Animal homes

I was doing research into how nests are made and found this documentary, I wanted to understand how they are made in order to have a better idea of the structure and shape of nests so this has been helpful in that respect. The utilitarian or functional/practical qualities of nests also interest me.

Vincent Van Gogh had a fascination with birds nests and had a large collection that he used to paint from. I saw this in the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam last year. In my opinion Van Gogh’s style of painting is perfect to communicate the structural and textural qualities of these shapes.